Tyger Requiem

After they shot Tatiana

he went back to that halting gait

he had as a widower,

before her sensual energy

bounced off the rocks, twice felt.

That she, not he, went after the boys

who taunted them tells something

about the couple. Ferocity:

that was hers, and he let her have it,

even if it meant she cuffed him

once in a while, her ears laid back,

her lethal claws retracted.

Tatiana never lost her wildness,

viciously attacked the hand that fed her,

then sank into a corner and glared

at the terrified witnesses.

Her old mate went into fits of fear

at a tiger poster the zoo put up

and then took down, from pity.

Tatiana groomed her sunset stripes,

pretended not to notice.

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Sleek, amber-eyed, big, bumbling.

After Tatiana was gone,

it hardly seemed worthwhile,

the great yellow-toothed yawn

which made the children scream.

His joints ached; he was confused

without her direction. He wet himself,

couldn’t get out of the dry moat

where she had forced her freedom

(was he trying to follow her ghost?)

Finally they came crying with his release

and with a mild flick of the black and orange tail

he left his lovely body.

(Tony, March 21, 1991-June 22, 2010)